


Last Call

by Devolucao



Category: All New X-Factor
Genre: Drinking to Cope, Gen, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Pietro Has Issues, Pietro Swears
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-02
Updated: 2014-12-02
Packaged: 2018-02-27 19:47:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2704370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Devolucao/pseuds/Devolucao
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everything is fine until it isn't. Pietro copes (or doesn't) in the wake of his press conference outing, a nasty article, and subsequent trending on Twitter. Remy helps by being Remy.</p><p>No one knows how the shoe pinches....</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Call

All things considered, he'd say that went well.

No sirens, no reporters, no paparazzi. Not here, at least. Not tonight. 

Pietro splits open another pistachio shell and delicately flicks the skin onto his napkin. He's got a bowl of these shells, already two shot glasses deep, and still the bartender brings more. Technically, they're free, but Pietro tips rather graciously in case they should have a mind to quarrel. They had at the first place, which is why he'd left. That, and they didn't have Rakia. Bars number two and three were much more accommodating, but far too crowded for his comfort. This one, he decides, is too quiet, too empty, but he's been banned from at least half a dozen others whose names he can't recall, and the liquor store--for when one wishes to hit rock-bottom in a hurry--has his and Lorna's pictures by the register.

He suspects they've grown weary of him here as well, but they haven't said anything so far. 

"Another vodka?"

"Da, multumesc. S-o iau pe măta,' he says, tapping the bar with a finger. "ȘI pe tăta Multumesc.1" 

"I'm sorry?"

"Yes, another vodka, thank you." That he is able to sit upright without wobbling, tells him he's alright; that there is still time and opportunity for things to go truly south. "Also, a glass of water." 

Technically, this is his third drink, and he's not slurring, he's From Somewhere. Where that is (Nunya) depends largely on his mood and his patience, but it's not as if they'd know the difference here enough to care. There is a vanishingly small voice in the back of his mind, that says maybe...just maybe...he's had enough. This isn't solving anything. This isn't conducive to anything. But the liquor sits nicely on his tongue and feels so good going down. His mind slows, his edges blur, and the world feels that much less aggravating for a moment.

Then he walks in, the very last person you'd expect to still give a shit.

"Oh, sha. Sha sha sha...."

He lifts his attention, not to Remy, but to the football match. "Search your heart, you know it to be true." He drains his glass, knowing now he's as good as finished. Făcut2. Let Remy judge him; at this stage, he doesn't really care. "Luke," he says, into the hollow of his empty glass, "I am your father."

"Man, you paiyahd!3"

Pietro turns to find him stood back with his hands on his hips; watching, gaging, like he's unsure what to do. So Pietro tells it to him. He says he's not ready to leave yet, so it's Remy's choice. Stay, sit, have a few drinks, or go and not tell anybody where he'd been. "Did you take a car?"

"Nope, I took a yaws." He sidles up to the bar, but remains standing, his eyes--hooded behind tinted glasses--busily flicking Pietro up and down. J'accuse, J'accuse. Finally he says, "I'll have a coke."

The bartender asks, "What kind?"

"Coca-cola," he says, flattening out a five dollar bill. "Not Pepsi, merci beaucoup." 

"Did Lorna send you?"

He flattens the bill some more. "I know this may come as a shock to you, Pietro, but I am fully capable of acting on my own recognizance."

"So, that's a yes."

"What's it matter?"

Pietro shakes his head. It matters. It just does.

"How much you had to drink?" Remy asks.

Pietro drops his face into his hands. "Cinci sau ...euhh...zece?4 Fuck it, I don't even know anymore." He'd stopped keeping count hours ago. "It never lasts long."

"My ass it don't."

Remy's drink arrives with Pietro's tab, and a hot, heavy hand on his upper back. No judgments from Remy, just consolation he hasn't earned, doesn't deserve, and pretends not to need. He's not the injured party here. He is the villain. He is the problem. He always has been. He's thankful that at least Crystal isn't here to see him backsliding.

Remy says, "So, you read the article."

Yup. Call it morbid curiosity, call it masochism, call it an excuse to relapse. "I knew I shouldn't have. I knew, I knew...." 

After everything both Lorna and Georgia had done to keep that accursed periodical from entering the house, buying and destroying absolute bales of it; distracting him with 'projects' and kitchen experiments; unplugging the t.v.s and the computers, even locking his cell phone; it was after the fire alarm went off and Snow's entire security detail came in, took over the kitchen, ate the terrible cookies he'd baked for Luna, that Pietro finally had had enough.

He's been trending on Twitter for nearly twenty-four hours by the time he figures out how to unlock his de pularie5 phone. In line for frozen yogurt. Flop sweat. Hands shaking. Toes numb. Orders under an alias (my, John Stamos, you've aged terribly!) Pays in cash; cannot flee fast enough, far enough. Cannot stay drunk enough. He wants to forget, not be reminded, and Remy's petting--nice as it is--is not helping things.

Remy coos at him like a colicky infant, rubbing his back while the bartender sends silent cues for them both to leave. "You been cryin'?" He asks.

"No," he says, not since five p.m. "And, I'm not buying this concern."

"Buy it and I'll throw in a Segway."

Pietro gives him a long hard side-eye from beneath his hand. "Alright," he sighs, as in, let's humor the idiot and be done with it. "What's a Segway?"

"Hell if I know, but you can rent one down the corner."

"I don't think y--that's not the joke."

Remy's eyes disappear when he smiles. "You think you tell it betta?" He's got this little hair-flip he does, also; head back, chin up. "C'mon. Tell me a joke in Romanian."

He thinks about it. He's got a few good ones; disgusting ones; he could make Remy blush and spit out his drink. But he's not really in the mood. He says, "I'm sorry. Maybe some other time." 

Remy sips his coke, watered down to hell now that the ice has melted. "So what now? Luna back home waitin' for you to acklike a father, you just gon' come sit here se saouler toute la nuit6? Feel sorry for yourself?"

That's about the speed of it, yes. He sticks a hand out for the bartender. "Shot of absinthe, please." 

"'kay, well, when you done doing that, then what?" Again, his hand on Pietro's back. He says, "I understand, there's some things you don't come back from. It ain't nice, but you live with it. Your burden, Pietro. You been carryin' it this far...."

That's the thing, though. He hasn't carried it. He has shrugged off responsibility at every turn, nearly self-destructed in the process, and only now that he's run out of lies, has it finally settled upon his shoulders. Only now, his spine scaffolded by millions of Attilan dollars in titanium rods and pins, does he find the weight of it too much to bear.

Does he wish the fall had killed him? Would it be cowardice to say so? He slaps his credit card down on the bar and pours the shot down his throat.

"Nimeni nu stie unde ciupeste de pantofi, dar care poarta fundul meu ca o palarie7," he snarls. "What do you know about it?"

Remy's face goes hard, and his nostrils flare, but he does not flinch. "I know I ain't a ackaholic," he says. "You got problems, we all do. I ain't here for that."

"Then why are you here?"

"I want you to come home." Not 'Lorna wants', not 'Luna wants', but 'I want'.

This gives him pause. Poking Remy is easy, a bit of harmless fun that means nothing and hurts nobody, until the crotchety bastard turns around and reminds you he's got feelings, and now it's not so fun anymore. Now it's two a.m., and that one brief stint at rehab has come back to haunt him. Now it's two years ago in New York, and a man has just slipped something into Pietro's drink. He doesn't realize this, of course, until he's sprawled out on the restroom floor with his cheek pressed against the urinal trough, refusing an ambulance. He's alright. It's out of his system now. Please, don't let Wanda find out. He's alright. 

"You really awright?"

Remy does the good, responsible thing and walks him home, but he'll wager a Segway ride that it's under duress, and only because Lorna asked him to. She still has yet to find out about Alex, his latest little white lie, and his pique over her not trusting him to look after himself is just the icing on top of this whole awful cake.

He is the worst of hypocrites. He hasn't learned a thing. 

"Define alright," he says, and if he walks a little too quickly, tant pis8. The wind feels nice on his face. The silence from Remy, however long it lasts, like a breath of fresh air.

Remy's not even trying to keep up. So long as he has Pietro in sight, he lets him stumble on like a perfect fool, his unspoken 'told you sos' ringing out with every painstaking step. Cars glide past them like sharks into the cold two a.m. depths of a DC metro autumn, and it occurs to Pietro that they're a lot farther from 'home' than he'd realized. He slows just enough to fall within earshot, and calls back.

"Surely you didn't walk all this way."

"Nope, cab." 

"And how did you know where to find me?"

"Call it intuition." A lengthy pause. He's stopped to light a cigarette; something Pietro hasn't seen him do in months. The sharp flick and metallic ring of a lighter snapping shut, then the scrape of his boot-heel on concrete; one short step followed by an almost imperceptible lag. "So, we can finally talk some Star Wars."

"Remy, it's twenty kilometers back to the house--"

"S'aigh," he says. Click, drag, exhale. "Nice out. Brisk."

How could he not have noticed Remy's limp? How is it shocking that, at age forty, age thirty-five, none of them quite bounce the way they used to?

"I'm calling you another cab," he says, digging anxiously around for his phone. "Honestly, you shouldn't have bothered coming out"--digging anxiously for his phone again, which he could have sworn was in his jacket just seconds ago--"whatever you may think of me, I'm a grown man, capable of making my own decisions, and now I'm responsible for two idiotsgod **damnit** Remy!"

Click, drag. He saunters, or rather slinks to within arms reach, and stops, Pietro's phone cradled guilelessly in his thieving palm. "Lookin' for this?"

That hand on his back makes a lot more sense now in retrospect.

"I take it back," says Pietro. "Feel free to walk."

**Author's Note:**

> Edit: fixed a swear
> 
> 1 Yes, thanks. I'll take your mother...your father too, thanks! (rom)
> 
> 2 Finished, done-for (rom)
> 
> 3 pie-eyed, drunk (caj)
> 
> 4 six or...uh...ten (rom)
> 
> 5 Shitty (rom)
> 
> 6 Drinking all night (fr)
> 
> 7 No one knows where the shoe pinches, but he who wears my asshole as a hat (rom)
> 
> 8 Oh well (fr)


End file.
